


Turn it off

by AMLark



Category: Daisy Jones & The Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:48:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23834134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMLark/pseuds/AMLark
Summary: I couldn’t save her the way Camille saved me, and when you love someone and have to deny them something you know might save them, it’s hell.
Relationships: Billy Dunne/Daisy Jones
Kudos: 11





	Turn it off

Billy:  
I lied, earlier. Or maybe I’m just repeating lies I’ve believed so long that they’re something like the truth. I don’t know. 

But there was more to that night. 

Daisy showed up to my room, and she was as close to sober as I’d ever seen her. Her pupils weren’t blown, and her breath smelled like toothpaste. She was too skinny. Daisy wasn’t pretty like a flower, not like her name implied. No, at that point Daisy looked like the sharp edge of a knife.

I know she wasn’t good for me, fire instead of water and all that. I knew we would be trouble. But I couldn’t turn her away. I spent so long fighting Daisy, but when she looked at me like that--lucid, I mean--there wasn’t a thing in the world I could deny her.

That night I told myself that if I could save Daisy, if I could sober her up, bring her back to the world, that might enough. If I got Daisy clean then maybe that would forgive me for what it would mean to Camille. The logic is twisted, wrong. But I knew Daisy, I had been Daisy. And because I had been her I couldn’t be with her, because I had already found Camille. 

And that was hell. 

It was hell, knowing that if I chose her I would always feel like a failure to Camille, that I would hate myself. Knowing that being with Camille meant I couldn’t be with Daisy. No that’s not right, I didn’t deserve Daisy, but knowing that since I already owed my life to Camille, I couldn’t be Camille for Daisy. I couldn’t save her the way Camille saved me, and when you love someone and have to deny them something you know might save them, it’s hell. 

Daisy burned, and I felt like instead of being her water, I was her kerosene. 

Daisy: 

I think, in everyone’s life we get one big love. 

For a lot of people, it’s their first. Big, new, all consuming. It’s like we have this limit on our relationships, a self-imposed safe guard. Then someone comes along and they blow past your limit and they take you with them, and you can feel so much _more_. 

Niko, and everyone else who came before him. They were in that first level. I didn’t know it at the time, the heartbreaks felt devastating and huge as I experienced them. But that’s only because I didn’t know what else there was. I didn’t know there was someone out there who could change me that way, who could make everything else feel like a scratch. 

Camille was big for your dad. And Billy was that for me. 

Billy: 

She told me she wanted to get clean. And I was so in love with her, and I was so scared of her. Scared that falling in love with her would only lead me back to where I started, back to before Camille. When she said she wanted to get clean I thought for a second that I had been given this second chance. I felt like I had died and come back to life. 

I threw the bottles out the window, but I didn’t reach for the phone. I was standing, Daisy had sat on my hotel bed, on one of those cheap blankets they never wash. I just sunk to my knees in front of her. She tried to say something, to ask me if I was ok. 

Daisy: 

I thought he was having a heart attack. But I didn’t believe it, I wasn’t scared. I just thought, _of course I’d show up to Billy’s on the night he has some sort of medical emergency_. 

Billy: 

I just wanted to hold her. It felt so good to finally just, hold this sharp, beautiful thing and not care if she cut me. 

Daisy: 

I--[shuffling noise, a shaking breath]. I don’t know if I’ll ever forget that feeling. I had this pain, I think, maybe since I met Billy. Definitely since the pool house. I had been living with this ache inside of me for so long I had become numb to it. And as soon as he held me it just, left. 

I think we must have sat like that, Billy on his knees, his arms around my waist and his head against my chest, my arms over his shoulders, for half an hour. 

I’m not going to tell you that he just held me. I wish I could. But that wasn’t enough.

Billy: 

I love her. Loved her. 

I told myself I was going to save her. But I think deep down I knew we were only going to get that one shot. 

Daisy: 

I didn’t know that would be our only chance. Billy was everywhere, I was everywhere. But all I could think was, _it doesn’t hurt, now that we’re together_. 

Billy: 

When I answered that phone, it hurt. Because I wanted a drink, and that visceral reaction. That craving for tequila or whisky or anything. That meant I needed Camille. 

And I couldn’t save Daisy. 

Daisy: 

I guess, in the end, I saved myself. And I’m proud of that now. But I can tell you, if you went back to 79 and offered me a choice, I would pick Billy. 

Even knowing it worked out in the end, I still would pick Billy. I think alot of my life has been reckoning with that. 

Billy: 

I failed her. Camille saved me from that too, even if she never knew it. Because if I didn’t have Camille, failing Daisy would’ve killed me.


End file.
